


The Heir Who Was Promised

by lodessa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Comfort, Dragons, F/M, Gen, Heir of Hogwarts Founders, Heir of Slytherin, Mentor/Protégé, Mild Inappropriate Thoughts, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Show!Jorah Characterization, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: Hogwarts Professor Mormont happens upon his favorite student out of bed in the middle of the night.
Relationships: Daenerys Targaryen & Jorah Mormont, Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 28
Kudos: 39
Collections: Jorleesi Equinox Exchange -Spring 2020





	The Heir Who Was Promised

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SlytherinHowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinHowl/gifts).



> **Written to the prompt: A Harry Potter AU, preferably post Second Wizarding War. Either Jorah or Dany has to be a Slytherin (a good one, that goes without saying), Jorah can’t be a Gryffindor. Teacher/student is appreciated, but not necessary. No Cursed Child. I will love you forever if you add references to A Very Potter Musical, Potter Puppet Pals or My Immortal, although they’re not obligatory. Dragons and other creatures and lore elements, please. I’d like at least one spell to be cast and that cannot be the killing curse, no murderous mad Targaryen bs tolerated here (but no one in this lovely fandom would take this rout, I’m sure). No sex here, please, and NO WAND JOKES.**

“Go away. Please, just leave me alone…” 

Jorah stops dead in his tracks. It is well after curfew and no students should be out of bed, or at least their common rooms, but that’s not what makes his reaction so sudden. It’s the sound of desperation in the voice, in her voice. Daenerys. Jorah would like to say that he’d recognize any of his students’ voices instantly, but at least in this case it is evidently true. 

“Stop! What do you want from me?” 

Her next words spur him to action, turning and rushing headlong in the direction her pleas are coming from, any number of potential culprits on his mind. Drogo has, thankfully, graduated but Jorah’s seen how Daario’s been acting towards Daenerys during Slytherin and Gryffindor’s double DADA classes this term. (He has also noticed the hearts scrawled in the margins of Daenerys’ notes with DN and DT in them. In his years of teaching he’s seen firsthand how abysmal the taste of teenage girls is when it comes to the objects of their affections as a rule, but Daenerys is truly in a special category of her own in this.)

The next sound he hears is some sort of inhuman hissing, and suddenly his worries about the dubious intentions of Mr. Naharis are replaced by something else instead. His jogging becomes a sprint, just barely clearing the next staircase before it moves away from his destination. 

He turns the corner, completely in the dark about what he is about to find, and still is taken aback. There are hundreds of snakes, surrounding Daenerys in a semicircle, all poised with their heads upright, facing her. He can see the tear stains on her lovely face. Her silver hair is disheveled and she is barefoot huddled on the cold stone floor in only a white nightgown to protect her from the chill. She is a vision in the dim light, looking distraught but not terrified as she faces the serpentine assembly before her, one that Professor Jorah Mormont wishes he was not so very aware of. 

He just barely manages to stop himself short, before stepping on the mass of snakes. _She’s your student, Jorah. She’s young enough to be your daughter and she’s a student under your care and in distress_ , he reminds himself. 

He’s about to call out to her, when she opens her mouth and a series of hissing sounds emanate from it that no human should be capable of making. All the snakes recoil visibly. Their hissing silences.

Daenerys stands up now, staring down the creatures before her with the look of some ancient queen facing an unruly mob. She hisses again and they all scatter, many slithering over his feet as though he were not here.

It is only when they are gone that she lets out a sob, breaking the trance he’s found himself in.

“Daenerys?” he calls out, moving towards her.

“Professor Mormont!” she yelps, clearly surprised to realize he is still there. A moment ago she seemed a fearless monarch and now he is reminded that she is a frightened girl, caught out after curfew by one of her professors (though he knows he has no intention of punishing her).

“Miss Targaryen,” he puts his hands on her shoulders, surprised to find her skin is not chilled. “Are you alright?”

“I can explain- Or rather… Bother! I don’t know what to say that won’t make things worse.”

She looks more frightened about his potential response than she had been of the snakes. He supposes that is fair, considering that the snakes seemed to obey her commands as long as they were issued in Parseltongue. That was what it had been, he can not doubt, and given the accounts he’s read about the events leading up to the last war… there is little doubt as to the import of such an ability. 

He’s not sure what to say to reassure her. He supposes the important thing is to remain calm and act normally. What would he usually do?

“Why don’t we start by making sure you’re more properly attired for the weather,” he suggests, pulling out his wand. “Accio cloak.”

He probably should have specified, because the spell summons a rather worn one from his office. Doubtless it smells of him, but it will have to do, he thinks as he wraps it around her shoulders. Despite the fact that she has mysteriously not been shivering, Daenerys seems to burrow into the offered garment, perhaps finding some of the intended comfort in it, so it likely is somewhat effective in his intended aim.

“Now tea, I should think, and you can tell me all about what’s going on, my dear,” he tells her, using one hand on her back to guide her in that direction.

He’s pretty sure he already knows most of what is going on without her having to explain, but he suspects it will be good for Daenerys to get it off her chest. 

She’s quiet on the walk to his office, clearly still worried about how he will react to any information gleaned from the scene he has just witnessed. He lets her have the time to compose herself, busying himself preparing the tea and fishing some biscuits out of a drawer when they arrive, after making sure she’s comfortably seated. It is not as if either of them is about to get sleep any time soon. 

“I don’t want you to think…” she starts but then stops and begins anew. “I know I should have told someone. I just thought… well if people knew… if people knew they’d think…”

Jorah knows what it is like to be ashamed, though his reasons are less innocent than Daenerys’.

“Do you want to know what I do think?” he breaks in, sitting down and reaching across his desk to put his weathered hand on her small white one.

She swallows, neither affirming nor the reverse. She does not shy away. 

“I think that you are one of the strongest witches I’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter, but moreover you have a good heart. I think you care overly much about what people who are beneath your worth think. I think that you would already be special, without being an heir to Slytherin, and that being so does not define you.”

“You aren’t afraid of what I might do? Considering the last heir…”

“The darkness in Voldemort’s heart had nothing to do with the fact that he could talk to snakes or that he was a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. Likely these things gave him a sense of importance, of having a greater destiny, but he chose to make that one of hatred, oppression, and destruction. I can’t imagine that’s what you would do with your power, Daenerys. Am I wrong?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “I don’t want that. I don’t want this at all. I wish they would leave me alone, instead of dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night and trying to herd me in some unknown direction… doubtless towards something monstrous.”

“Another basilisk?” Jorah can’t help wondering.

“They keep telling me I need to help her. I don’t even know who _she_ is.””

“And yet you ventured out of bed, despite possible danger and consequences. Why do you think that is?”

He knows the answer. He’s looked down and seen her seek out students sitting alone, seen her intervene on the behalf of bullied first years, seen her in class helping classmates who were struggling. That’s who Daenerys Targaryen is, though he’s not sure she realizes it yet.

“If I needed help… I would hope someone would help me.” Daenerys bites her lip, holding his gaze as she adds. “I’m glad someone helped me.”

_And I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner._ Jorah thinks, remembering the situation he’s discovered Daenerys in when he’d finally found her, holed up in the middle of nowhere with her unstable, abusive, squib brother. 

_They won’t accept you,_ Viserys had screamed, tugging on her arm as she followed Jorah into the light. _They’ll turn on you and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t stay here with me and wait for our people to take back the wizarding world._

“You always have a choice,” he reminds her, “Even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.”

“What if I help whoever, or whatever, it is that the snakes want me to go to and it results in people getting hurt or killed?” she asks, but it feels less like a question to him than to herself.

“We make decisions to the best of our ability based on what we know at the time. I’ve made enough mistakes in my life, by Merlin’s beard, but the only other option is to do nothing.”

She’s so young, younger than Jorah can even remember being in some ways, and yet Daenerys has always carried a weight on her shoulders he can’t fathom. Part of him blames Viserys and his grandiose paranoia for that, but he feels at the same time that it is more than that.

“Let me go with you,” he offers. “I’ll protect you should it come to that, and we can go together to the Headmistress should this end up being something she needs to know about. You don’t have to be alone, Daenerys.”

He is the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, but his motivation is more than that. He wants to help Daenerys particularly, wants to stand by her and be there to see her become the legend he knows now she is destined to be. He wants- Oh, it doesn’t matter: those first reasons are more than enough.

“Aren’t you supposed to be assigning me detention and sending me back to bed?” she suddenly seems to remember.

“I can,” he offers, “If that would help. Would it help?”

“No,” she concedes. “There’s a part of me that wants to hide from this, but the snakes won’t let me. Even if they would… I need to see this through.”

“Summon them then,” he tells her: standing back up, setting down his teacup, and drawing his wand once more.

The sounds that come from her lips next should not leave him feeling that he is witnessing something sublime, but from her they feel as though they are. 

She takes his hand, as the snakes begin to slither around them, guiding him down the path they seem to form, guiding them back in the direction he’d found Daenerys, and then still further, downwards into the dungeon levels. He’s not sure he’s ever been this far down, but the snakes keep on leading them on, and they follow in silence.

Eventually they come to a dead end, with an ornate pattern carved into the rock. He looks over at Daenerys and sees she’s closed her eyes, stretching one hand out and tracing a groove at the center of the design. She hisses something but it sounds different from the Parseltongue he’s heard so far, a sound with more vibrato.

The section of the floor they are standing on starts to sink down slowly, and he wraps one arm protectively around Daenerys as they descend.

The snakes don’t follow, as the platform levitates itself downward to the point where even the very dim light of the torches above disappears.

“Lumos” he whispers quietly, Daenerys following suit as they both hold their wands out to try to see what is around them.

Finally they touch down, and as they step onto the soft sandy ground, the whole chamber suddenly starts to glow with a low pulsing red light. Looking around, Jorah sees a massive stone carving that fills the room, an immense dragon of a type he’s never seen or read about, coiled around the perimeter.

“A second chamber of secrets?” he wonders allowed. “Who made this stature I wonder?”

“It’s not a statue,” Daenerys says with a settled conviction, walking away from him to reach out and press one hand against the dragon’s face. “This is what the snakes wanted me to see. She’s still alive, the dragon, just petrified. She’s been waiting for many lifetimes. I can hear her in my mind.”

He is taken aback, but then he remembers something. He remembers when he stumbled upon Daenerys’s existence, when he used spellwork to trace the Founders lines back and forward as far as he could. 

There was a rumor, a myth so absurd that not even the Quibbler would have taken it seriously. If there was some truth to it, that might explain what was happening though.

Salazar Slytherin: Serpent Spawn. That’s what some of the oldest accounts called him, the kind of scrolls that might use snake and dragon interchangeably in describing a fearsome beast. It was something accepted to be hyperbole, but what if it wasn’t completely made up? What if those old tales were more than pure allegory and one of Slytherin’s ancestors really had been bewitched by an enchantress, who was not what she seemed, an ancient dragon who could change shape at will and who bore him a son who helped shape this place and their world?

“They poisoned her, the villagers. She offered them the gift of magic but then after she blessed them with it they didn’t want her to share it with anyone else, they wanted to keep the power only for themselves and their descendents. They poisoned her and the rest of her kind, to turn them slowly into dumb beasts, and her son sought out the basilisk to petrify and protect her... keep her frozen in time safe until he could find a cure. She’s calling me ‘child’... or maybe ‘grandchild’... ”

Jorah thinks about the wizarding world, about the old pureblood families and their attempts to cling to relevancy. He knows in his heart that what Daenerys says this dragon has told her is true, even though he’s been a skeptic his whole life. 

“I have to help her,” Daenerys says. “I have to find the cure he could not and revive her. I have to help her complete her mission to gift all of humanity with magic. I have to restore the true nature of dragonkind.”

It should sound absurd, this teenage girl vowing to upend everything that he knows about how magic and the world works. Instead, he knows that he will follow her to hell and back, that he will stop at nothing to protect and aid her, in spite of everyone who will try to stop her.

“I pledge my wand to your cause, Daenerys Dragonborn,” he swears aloud, sinking down onto his knees before her, hands palms up with said wand balanced across them. “Whatever it takes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully this lives up to your imagination for it. I know it is not particularly shippy, but this is as far as I was comfortable taking it with the student/teacher element. Feel free to imagine that after she's grown up a bit and completely upended the wizarding world, Dany and Jorah's relationship might develop in a more romantic direction. After all, with the expanded lifespan that wizards have, at some point the age gap will become trivial, right?


End file.
